Dead Scientists DO Tell Tales

Microbiologist Dr. David Kelly, 59, was found dead after seemingly slashing his wrist in a wood near his home at Southmoor, Oxfordshire, days after being named as the Iraq dossier mole. An investigation into the circumstances surrounding his death continues. Dr. Kelly was Britain's leading expert on Baghdad's weapons programs.

Dr. Steven Mostow, 63, was one of the country's leading infectious disease and bioterrorism experts and was associate dean at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. He died in a plane crash near Centennial Airport.

Dr. Ian Langford, 40, found dead at his blood-spattered and ransacked home. Langford was a Senior Fellow at the Univ. of East Anglia's Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment in the UK. He was discovered by police and ambulance men. The body was naked from the waist down and partly wedged under a chair. Cause of death: not determined by post-mortem examination.

Dr. David Banks, 55, died in an aircraft crash in Queensland, AU. Much of Dr. Banks' work involved trying to keep diseases affecting cattle, pigs and fruit orchards out of Australia. His current work looked at foot and mouth disease and its potential to spread through the archipelago and Australia in addition to swine fever, Nipah virus and Japanese encephalitis.

Virus expert, Dr Robert E. Shope, and principal author of a highly publicized 1992 report by the National Academy of Sciences warning of the possible emergence of new and unsettling infectious illnesses died at age 74 of lung transplant complicatons. Dr. Shope also built the World Reference Center for Emerging Viruses and Arboviruses, a collection of some 5,000 samples.

Harvard biochemistry professor Don C. Wiley has been declared missing after his abandoned rental car was discovered on a highway outside of Memphis, Tenn. The car, discovered on I-40which runs between Memphis and Arkansashad the keys in the ignition, the hazard lights off and a full tank of gas.

Award-winning micro-biologist David Wynn-Williams, 55, killed by a vehicle while out jogging in England. In 2000 he was appointed leader of the Antarctic Astrobiology Project, which explores the effects of environmental stress at the limits of life on Earth. Wynn-Williams had assessed the capability of microbes to adapt to environmental extremes, including the bombardment of ultraviolet rays and global warming.

Dr. Eugene F. Mallove, a Norwich Free Academy graduate, 56, died May 14, 2004 after being beaten to death during an alleged robbery. Mallove appeared on Coast To Coast AM as recently as Feb. 2004 speaking about alternative energy. Mallove was well respected for his knowledge of cold fusion. http://www.infinite-energy.com/

Jeong H. Im, retired protein chemist, age 72, was found in the burning trunk of his car with mutlitple stab wounds to the chest.

West Nile researcher, Dr. Michael Perich, 46, died in a one-vehicle car accident. From 1986 to 1992, Perich worked at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Md., as the vector suppression program manager and research medical entomologist. Colleagues described him as "one of the few entomologists with the experience to go out and save lives today."